John P. Friel, Ph.D.

Many museums are currently under threat of being closed. The Academy of Natural Sciences, the oldest natural history museum in the US, is no exception. Please take the time to read our statement on this matter.

🕯️CANDLE VIGIL TONIGHT🕯️ Yesterday’s City Hall hearing went well. Now let’s gather together to remind Drexel that we aren’t going away. Open the doors. #savetheacademy

Today’s hearing was incredible. While I am disappointed to report that no one from the mayor’s office, attended, city council absolutely grilled the Drexel University representative. It exceeded every expectation. Another hearing is scheduled for Nov 16th. Get your popcorn ready.

Today’s hearing at City Hall regarding the closure of The Academy of Natural Sciences went well. Part 2: This Time with Subpoenas! is scheduled for Nov 16th. www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

Let's all dream about dreaming spiders for #Archtober.🕷️💤

More Alexis Rockman art. This particular piece makes all the anachronistic animal art I've ever commissioned look tame.

www.insidehighered.com/news/busines...

New, comprehensive study on the skeletal anatomy of Dialipina salgueroensis. Pretty compelling anatomy here supporting a position outside the osteichthyan crown group, which implies relatively late survivorship of this otherwise Silurian clade cdnsciencepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

This year's "Haunting at the Museums" event on October 27 from 5-8 p.m. is inspired by the Hodges Meteorite, Ann Hodges’ Philco radio, and Orson Welles' “War of the Worlds” broadcast! Read More: → bit.ly/4smFmvY

Evolutionary 'game-changer': weird armoured amphibian lived in ancient seas www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The seasons are changing, the water is cooling, and the lookdowns are back in town #lookdown #elegantoddball #shiny #coralcitycamera

🚨📰 BREAKING NEWS 📰🚨 There will be a PRESS CONFERENCE at CITY HALL in Philly before the hearing about The Academy of Natural Sciences!! Be outside on the NORTH side of City Hall at 1PM!!! #savetheacademy #academyofnaturalsciences #philadelphia

This is the appropriate way to react if you come across a fossil fish.

For spooky season, here's one of my favorite scientific illustrations: this goofy bat by Carl Linnaeus. #histsci 🗃️ #SciArt

I'm talking about 'queerness' in biology today, from clownfish sex changes to 'virgin birth' in Komodo dragons to sea turtle hatchlings being born male or female based on nest temperatures -- all while raising funds for the QueerCare charity. Join us @ twitch.tv/paleontologizing

Had a wonderful time at James Madison University these last few days where I gave a talk about evolution and another about my research and natural history museums. Always great seeing how other places do things while meeting new students and faculty.

Believe it or not, this absolute unit of a goliath grouper is still just a youngster; adults can weigh over 800 pounds! 🫡🫡🐟 #goliathgrouper #grouper #endangeredspecies #bigfish #coralcitycamera

In the world of #paleaort and #dinosaur depictions there’s always been interest in The Age of Reptiles mural on show at Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, Connecticut, sometimes called the Zallinger Mural. I'm here sharing a thread orignally posted at Twitter.... 1/n

Diving into a book (interpreted by a flying fish in 1575).

The Malagarasi River in Tanzania. One of the most special places I’ve ever visited. Large mammals, cool fishes and wild country…it doesn’t get much better. #flyfishing #wildrivers

Interested in sharks, fossils, or biomechanics? We're advertising a competitively funded @centa.bsky.social PhD at the Uni. of Birmingham, with the NHM, looking at form and function in living and extinct shark jaws🦈 More details here centa.ac.uk/studentship/..., please email me with any questions.

Barn owls likely dispersed to North America from Eurasia by crossing the Atlantic into the Caribbean. Once there, they diversified into several species, some giant and now extinct, before fanning out onto the continents. 🦉 www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/cari... Study: doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

New species of banjo catfish just dropped.🐟🧪 mapress.com/zt/article/v...

Three years ago, my dad said that all fish are the same shape. Out of spite, I decided to draw all 478 families of bony fish listed in Nelson 2016. There's still some stuff I need to edit and some fish I want to redraw but, after 985 days, I finished my big dumb fish project last night.

In 1575, this fish was catching up on the reading, and maybe wanted to eat a few German words.

This rather involved article gives us a lot of useful background info prior to next week’s hearing. www.phillymag.com/news/2026/10...

Exciting news!! I'm chairing the search in my department @lsubiosci.bsky.social for an **Endowed Chair in Lichenology**! The candidate should be tenured (or equivalent), and have a documented track record in excellent in collections-based lichen research. lsu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/LSU/jo...

Join us in front of the Academy on Oct 27th to mark the one month anniversary since the museum was closed to the public. #savetheacademy

For the discerning fish biologist in your life! Or women (or men) everywhere who want fish! Consider this fetching gyotaku print hat from my etsy shop. www.etsy.com/listing/4599...

So, the family trip to Gatlinburg was eventful! And I got to use some of the 🧪 knowledge I learned from GRIZZLED.

@pearlmania500.bsky.social added their voice to the outcry against the closure of the Academy of Natural Sciences. THANK YOU! #savetheacademy youtube.com/shorts/da7_6...

Shortnose Gar from the Minnesota River! New @garlab.bsky.social PhD student Griffin Blegen getting to work on some photoGARphy🐟📸👍

Zebra cichlid (Lobochilotes labiata) caught in Lake Tanganyika, Tanzania on a Rooster Tail spinner.

New manuscript by former PhD student Logan Turner, where we evaluated max thermal tolerance of cryptobenthic fishes. We found differences between species, and among individuals of the same species at different locations. This coincides with patterns of O2 consumption www.int-res.com/journals/mep...

Big changes for tiny fishes! Our new study of coral reef dwarfgobies shows that Eviota is not a single evolutionary lineage. We resurrect Eviotops and synonymise Sueviota with Eviota. Read more: doi.org/10.1643/i202... #Ichthyology #Fishes @sotonoceanearth.bsky.social @unisouthampton.bsky.social

New print release in the Aliens Collection! The new Alien #31 is a Sargassum Frogfish (Histrio histrio), the smallest I've ever seen, at about the size of your pinky nail. Unlike most of my Aliens, it has metamorphosized out of its larval…. - read the full story behind the shot on the website

Some unexpected coverage in the New York Times of this story! www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/s... #Ornithology #generativeAISlop 🧪

Jiménez-Vergara CR, Thomaz AT, Garzón-Restrepo AJ, Malabarba LR, Monroy M. Morphological diversification of defensive glands in Corydoradinae catfishes indicates a mixed Müllerian-Batesian mimicry system. Neotrop Ichthyol. 2026; 24(4):e260051. 🐟🧪 doi.org/10.1590/1982...

A presentation about a proposed #Wikidata type specimen data model I recently gave at the Wikidata WikiProjects Days event. Slides and script can be found here doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... Slides have also been uploaded into Wikimedia Commons commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mo...

It is done. My magnum opus. My legacy.

We had a wonderful National Fossil Day at the Sternberg Museum on Sunday, welcoming almost 800 guests! There were collections tours, special exhibits, activities, and more! Importantly, we used our paleo collections to discuss the importance of collections and ethics of the public trust.